Travis McKie’s first season at Wake Forest ended with a long losing streak.

No matter what happens now, at least his final one won’t.

The Demon Deacons snapped a seven-game slide Tuesday night with a 62-57 win against a Clemson team trying to play its way into the NCAA tournament.

“When you lose seven in a row, a lot of things go wrong – everything you do is wrong,” McKie said. “Getting on the other side of the column is great. Now we just have to keep moving forward and keep getting better.”

The Demon Deacons (15-13, 5-10 ACC) erased an early 10-point deficit and shot 55 percent against the league’s second-stingiest defense.

Frustrating the Tigers by mixing a couple of zone defenses, they held on to avoid their third winless February since the school started keeping complete records in 1951 and delivered a serious blow to Clemson’s NCAA tournament chances.

“I’m sure it hurts it a lot,” Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. “Just losing hurts, though. We don’t want to lose any game, and to lose it the way we did where we were kind of in control at halftime was disappointing. … We’re kind of learning as we go on this journey.”

Damarcus Harrison scored 15 points for the Tigers (17-10, 8-7), who pulled within two points on Jaron Blossomgame’s three-point play with 29.1 seconds left.

After Cavanaugh made it a four-point game with two free throws with 20.7 seconds left, Rod Hall missed on a contested drive. McKie added a free throw with 8.2 seconds remaining.

K.J. McDaniels – the league’s third-leading scorer – had 10 points on 3-of-11 shooting and missed six of seven attempts from 3-point range.

“Our best player had a tough night,” Brownell said. “He hasn’t had many, but tonight was a night he struggled a little bit, and we just didn’t have enough other guys play well enough to carry us in the second half.”

But with his team down by two with 1:39 left, McDaniels missed two free throws. The rebound was tapped out to Codi Miller-McIntyre, and the Wake Forest guard jetted toward the bucket and hit a layup through contact from Hall. His free throw made it 59-54 with 1:34 left.

Hall finished with 10 points for Clemson, which managed one field goal during the 6 1/2 -minute span in which Wake Forest took the lead for good. Clemson fell to 2-19 at Joel Coliseum.